[ Dickens / "The Guest" ]
Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) is of course one of the giants of British Literature, a hugely popular novelist and short-story writer in his day, now probably best known for "A Christmas Carol" and novels such as Bleak House, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and others. Dickens was also editor and owner of two popular magazines at different points.
Dickens was also a great lover of dogs, and owned at least two Newfoundlands in his lifetime.
"The Guest" is a short story by Dickens that forms part of a related collection of seven stories, collectively known as The Holly Tree Inn, by several authors. These stories were first published in the weekly magazine Household Words — edited and partly owned by Dickens — in the issue for December 25, 1855.
This story — a Christmas-themed love story, basically — is narrated by a young man who finds himself stranded in a snow-bound inn on Christmas Eve. Having exhausted all the available reading material, he occupies himself by recalling all the stories he has ever heard about inns. He begins by recalling several ghoulish tales told to him as a young boy by his nanny, one of which involves a Newfoundland:
The brother-in-law was riding once, through a forest, on a magnificent horse (we had no magnificent horse at our house), attended by a favourite and valuable Newfoundland dog (we had no dog), when he found himself benighted, and came to an Inn. A dark woman opened the door, and he asked her if he could have a bed there? She answered yes, and put his horse in the stable, and took him into a room where there were two dark men. While he was at supper, a parrot in the room began to talk, saying, "Blood, blood! Wipe up the blood!" Upon which, one of the dark men wrung the parrot's neck, and said he was fond of roasted parrots, and he meant to have this one for breakfast in the morning. After eating and drinking heartily, the immensely rich tall brother-in-law went up to bed; but, he was rather vexed, because they had shut his dog in the stable, saying that they never allowed dogs in the house. He sat very quiet for more than an hour, thinking and thinking, when, just as his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at the door. He opened the door, and there was the Newfoundland dog! The dog came softly in, smelt about him, went straight to some straw in a corner which the dark men had said covered apples, tore the straw away, and disclosed two sheets steeped in blood.
(XII: 577)
The narrator reports that he was so terrified by this part of the story that he no longer remembers the rest!
See also this brief note regarding Dickens and Newfies here at The Cultured Newf.